


midnight with a dead moon

by cosmoscorpse



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, canon-typical suicidal thoughts & ideation, introspection and heavy angst, take care of yourselves folks, the bridge scene(tm) except extended, what hank did after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:12:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: Where are you going, Lieutenant?To get drunker, he’d said, but this is what he does instead:





	midnight with a dead moon

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for: your canon-typical hank anderson suicidal thoughts and ideation - _please_ mind yourselves, folks <3
> 
> this has been through a round or two of edits - im done looking at it; sorry if something slipped through! its as done as its getting, this bitch needs to let it go

When Hank was younger he used to imagine that he could cut his rage out like it was a foreign object - like it was something rotten at the core of him about the size of a walnut, a kernel of hot iron that made a home under his ribs, some _thing_ that some _one_ skilled enough could crack open his ribs and pull out. He’d thought maybe his ex-wife, thank god for her, might be the one to do it. Thought the kid they’d made together, the most perfect little creature he’d known then or since, would certainly do it.

He’d thought he could do better, _be_ better, and had wanted that desperately.

Then there was a snowy evening, and black ice on the road, and a car wreck. And his son died on an operating table with his ribs cracked open and no one skilled enough around to put what he needed back _in_.

And then Hank stopped thinking about his anger like it was something that could be excised.

_Where are you going, Lieutenant?_

And he leveled with himself that what he _was_ , was as good as it was getting.

“To get drunker,” he spits, hostility curdling his voice and coiling in his stomach, “I need to think.”

He intends to make good on the promise. He starts by storming off into the cold, so angry he can hardly think, clutching the six pack like a lifeline in one hand. The other beer he’s been working on sloshes dangerously, not even enough left to be worth drinking.

He discards it in the trashcan nearest to his car, fumbles his keys a moment before getting his door open and falling into the driver’s seat. The remaining beer goes in the footwell of the passenger side, and he spends a moment in the silence breathing hard and clutching the wheel. Doesn’t know what the fuck he’s waiting for, except maybe for the plastic asshole to follow him, with its damn face and its damn voice and its binary concern and -

He decides he doesn’t need to think, actually. He’s had more than e- _fuck_ _in-_ nough of that to keep him for the rest of his life in the last few days, thank you _very_ much.

_Where are you going, Lieutenant?_

Like it’s not fucking obvious, like he didn’t hold a gun up to its head, like he couldn’t pull the trigger then and can’t pull it now and likely as not won’t be able to pull it before the night is over, either.

He expects he’ll go rot his gut instead: indulge in the paid service of a wide smile without questions and the burn of whiskey down his throat and the numbing drone of some rerun game on the TV, just turn his brain off and drink until things get _quiet_ again, and Jim or some other poor fuckin’ barhand scrapes him up off the counter and shuffles him out the door.

He _expects_ it to follow him.

 _You know what I am_ , it had said, and stepped closer, big fuckin’ doe eyes empty as sin, only -

Only. And that’s the kicker, ain’t it. That _only_. That goddamn grey space between the mechanic and the organic - the _are you afraid to die?_ And no, the answer should be _no_ , machines can’t- shouldn’t- wouldn’t _feel,_ let alone _fear_ , _only_ —

_I would certainly find it - regrettable._

Hank slams a hand on the steering wheel, bright pain cutting through the bullshit, re-centering himself. He waits another moment - for _what? -_ for the passenger door to open, for that god-fuckin-damned _Lieutenant Anderson.._.

But Connor doesn’t follow him - doesn’t fall into the passenger seat like Hank’d half expected it to, and something about that digs at him, somewhere in the viscera of his gut. The thing’s still standing where Hank left it, hands at its side and staring into the middle distance. He should have shot it. Maybe that would have made him feel better, being able to actually shoot something for once, Jesus fucking God.

Hank twists the key in the ignition. The engine roars to life, radio picking up a beat after. Loud enough, almost, to drown out his thoughts. He needs a fucking drink.

Hank stomps down hard on the gas, and doesn’t spare it another backwards glance.

_What happens if I pull this trigger?_

Hank _knows_ he gets angry.

He also knows he’s a glutton for punishment. He’s driving on autopilot, brain a sharp mess of static and heavy metal, which is why he’s not as surprised as he might have been when he finds himself putting his car in park nowhere near Jimmy’s at all.

The streetlight he’s parked under is flickering. When he turns the key in the ignition and the engine goes silent he can hear the fluorescent bulb buzzing softly but incessantly. The snow is falling in fat, slow flakes, and the night is still.

“Ah, shit,” he says, his hands feeling heavy on the steering wheel, his heart a lump in his throat and his gut bottoming out from under him. The anger’s fizzling out and leaving him feeling scraped empty. A buzzing sensation not unlike the electric hum of the light settling in behind his eyes.

Hank reaches down into the passenger side footwell to retrieve a beer, popping the cap off on his dashboard and taking a long, deep drink. Then he heaves himself out of his car and into the cold, quiet night, and he enters the cemetery.

Elmwood is pristine like this - late at night, fresh snow unmarred by traffic and so fucking quiet. Hank feels clumsy and his breathing sounds thunderous, clearly - _blatantly_ \- out of place. He’s on edge, not _nearly_ drunk enough for this, and he hates that he came here instead of going to Jimmy’s like he’d intended when he started driving. He hates that he knows exactly why he’d come here instead.

_What happens if i pull this trigger, hm?_

And just like that he’s there. There’s a skiff of snow over the gravestone, some worse-for-wear cloth flowers in the vase at the foot of it. Hank kneels to brush the snow away.

 _Cole Anderson, September 23, 2029 - October 11, 2035_. _Beloved_ , gone three years now _and dearly missed_. His ex had chosen the spot, had got the stone engraved, had spent hours and hours and hours on the phone with the funeral director and handled it. She’d handled it, because Hank couldn’t.

Three years now. Cole had just turned six.

Hank _couldn’t_. His hand is shaking when he raises the bottle to his lips again. It tastes sour.

_Nothing. There would be nothing._

And here’s the thing: there are more things under the sun that Hank _doesn’t_ know than he cares to ever try to count. Chief among them is the shiny fact that Hank never quite decided if he believed in God - never quite decided he believed in an afterlife, either, even after his _son_ \--

Even after there were a whole host of folks lining up to tell him that _Cole was in a better place_ , that _he was safe and happy in heaven_ , that he would see him again, someday; like any of it was a comfort when all he wanted was his son with him, alive, now.

And of the few things he _is_ sure of - chief among _those_ is that his child is dead, and he is standing over his grave drinking shitty beer in the dead of night. He doesn’t know if Cole is somewhere in some vague ether, looking down on him - doesn’t know what he _wants_ to be the truth, if what he’s seeing is:

Well.

_Are you afraid to die?_

Cole Anderson. Six years old.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes, a sob grabbing him by his throat and throttling him. Grief like this blindsides him these days - so used to it aching like a hangover that when the wound reopens he can hardly stand upright. It cuts through him like a shot. Hot shame floods his belly and the bottle drops from nerveless fingers as he presses his hands against his eyes. Somehow, he’s started crying. He’s shaking so hard he’s going to fall apart, and he sinks to his knees in the snow, “Fuck, I’m _sorry_.”

Because he is. Hank doesn’t know a lot of things but he knows, in his bones, that he fears death, fears that there’s nothing but a gaping, aching silence at the end of the road.

He’s scared to fucking death that his kid isn’t waiting for him and he’s running himself into the ground for nothing, and scared even more that he _is_ \- that he’s _waiting_ and Hank can’t pull the _fucking_ trigger, not on a stupid _fucking_ android and sure as fuck not on himself. He’s dragging his heels. He’s scared to fucking death - _Christ,_ he _wishes_.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, thickly, thinking about the beer trickling into the snow, the grass underneath, his child’s body somewhere under all that earth for _three goddamn years now_ , and the revolver at home with its one bullet that he can’t ever make hit _quite_ home. He folds in the snow till his forehead is pressed to the cold granite of his son’s gravestone - Cole Anderson, six _fucking_ years old, God - and he cries.

What is he doing? What is he _doing?_

He tires himself out, crying. The snow soaks into his pants and numbs his palms and his face and he thinks he could rest here. Just lay down here. Not a bullet, no, but maybe as effective.

He sits up instead, stands on unsteady legs. He feels like a raw nerve, a live wire, like there’s something that’s come loose from him and is floating about a step to the left.

“I’m sorry,” he says a last time. He traces the engraved words on the tombstone, feeling impossibly tired, and he bends to pick up the emptied beer bottle.

He can't keep on like this forever.

Without much sound at all, time marches forward, and the stretch of days between the last day his son was alive and this moment, here, grows just a little bit longer. Someday the days his son has been dead will outnumber the days he had been alive, and if these things were weighed on scales like a heart against a feather, someday it’s going to mean Hank _finally_ putting a bullet in his brain -- or not. He’ll have to make the decision.

_What happens if --_

It’s late.

Hank goes home.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK Y'ALL so much for making it through to the end. id love to hear from you if youre so inclined!
> 
> until next time xx
> 
> ETA: ALSO DONT DRINK AND DRIVE SERIOUSLY


End file.
